Originally Posted by Xizor
Ok so I'll try logically and consistent when being illogical has failed. (Up yours Sherlock Holmes ) So the explanation for my raving is:

Premise 1: I think that side quests in F3 are for the most part an uneventful experience (still better than the main quest). With bleak'n'weak characters. The quests try to be much more but IMHO fail. Some locations are nicely done, but empty.

Premise 2: The ME side quests do not try to be anything but cannon fodder for loot and XP. That is just miserable, however you quickly accept them as being such and either quit or move on for the sake of loot. The main story is told in a very good way, even though not the most original one in the bunch.

Premise 1a: The exploration in F3 is hindered by "canyoning" the world with debris and ruins. I strongly object to that. If it is an exploration I want to go wherever I want and by any means I want. Drudging along the metro is just not cutting it.

Premise 2a: The Normandy can take you anywhere, practically anywhen. Is a cool ship to boot. Although you do not really explore anything. You pick a system from the starchart, read some nice descriptions of the planets and land on !khazam! another copy-paste planet with bad guys.

Conclusion 1: Exploration in F3 is bad.

Conclusion 2: Exploration in ME is bad.

The degrees of suckiness may vary from person to person, however I still maintain that you cannot pick F3 superior "exploration" as a point over ME

For reasons stated before (being tied to F1&2, and liking a good story over other elements), I am more inclined towards ME than F3.

Thank you for a good conversation, flame on

Disclaimer: the premise-conclusion thing may not follow from a standpoint of formal logic

Though I strongly disagree with you about Fallout 3 exploration, it's very nice to see a detailed clarification of your opinion and what it's based on.

I don't understand how anyone could describe the side-quest areas as empty, and as I said I think it's one of the best games in recent times in terms of making areas both unique and interesting. About the "canyoning" I think that's pretty unfair when you consider how open the world is, and you'll be VERY hard pressed to find any game that doesn't have this in one way or another. It's true that the DC area was made with some shortcuts, but if you really expected an area that big to be fully detailed with unique locations that were fully explorable, you were being totally unrealistic. No game in existence has content on that scale. It's a design choice to give you the illusion of scale whilst retaining the unique feeling of the individual locations. Sure, it could be done like they did in, say, GTA and just have a barren town with textures instead of actual doors.

Anyway, you can't argue with opinions, and it's good to know where you're coming from with yours.